Meta

Archive for March 27th, 2013

Companies like to be covered by The Press when The Press has something nice to say about them. When The Press doesn’t have nice things to say about them, companies don’t like The Press anymore and they close up inside themselves like a sea anemone at low tide on a sunny day. That’s why the whole concept of having a Press Corps in an industry is dumb.

Nonetheless, The Press continues to exist pretty much everywhere and that’s where the dumb thing gets even dumber. People who work in The Press think of themselves as important. I kid you not. They think the things they say, the pearls of wisdom they embed in endless streams of blogs, articles, and even tweets, somehow impact decision making inside of the companies The Press are blogging, opining, and tweeting about. But that’s not really true. It’s just plain dumb that The Press think that what they say actually matters.

So what does matter? What really does make a difference inside of a company? What really impacts the decision making and/or decision makers inside a company? It’s simple: The customers.

Randy Royce died yesterday of cancer. You probably didn’t know him. I didn’t know him very well, but his wife and I went to high school together. The first time I met Randy, Yvette was sitting on his lap at our big noisy 10-year class reunion. I always remembered that, because you never saw two people who had more fun together, who loved each other more.

Randy was mayor of San Carlos in recent years, and worked for many years before that at HP and Agilent. A long time ago, we were with Randy and Yvette at a dinner party given by mutual friends. Randy mentioned that he knew Paul Otellini from college and I said, “Really? I’d like to meet Paul Otellini. I’d liked to interview him.”